In order for nanotechnology to have an impact on large objects, it needs to have a self-replication system. The idea of how to create a self-replicating module was first formalized by legendary mathematician John von Neumann (1903–1957) in a series of lectures during the late 1940s and in a 1955 Scientific American article.[53] But the full range of his ideas was not collected and widely published until 1966, almost a decade after his death.
